What is your favorite internet browser? (2018-2019)

I'm always plugged in, so I use Chrome.

 

Netscape Navigator, baby!!

Well not really, but I used it even as it evolved into Mozilla and later Firefox....... I still have a coffee mug with the Netscape "N" logo on it.

 

Chrome Extension Manifest V3 could end uBlock Origin for Chrome

 

First kill the old nice GUI with the change to the stupid new rounded look, then Kill Ad Blockers.
People Are Mad That Google Chrome May Kill Ad Blockers
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...you-mean-its-ugly.822800/page-5#post-10853228

 

I'm in the process of moving back to Firefox as Chrome gains more control over the user experience. Mozilla isn't without issues and everyone wants a piece of the Ad market, but Google is an Ad company first, and it's in their best interest to maximize advertising within their product.

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk

 

about:config in bookmark toolbar is exactly what I like about FF. Ive been called worse than an idiot though, no hard feelings! Cool thread. Vivaldi piques my interest again after reading through, its been a minute. Chrome isn't my bag, but I use Brave as a back-up.
FF, Waterfox, Palemoon all make sense to me. uBlock origin and uMatrix are invaluable. Raymond Hill gives us a Jonas Salk type gift for Internet browsing. Newest FF peppered with addons above & the Github/ghacks user.js works great... fast, lowered resouces. My only beef w/ newer FF (post 63+/-?) is the inability to turn-off auto-update checks.

This project is interesting. JonDoBrowser
http://ip-check.info/
(Paid , I think)

 

Getting coffee this morning. Ahhh Netscape, my old friend lol!

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk

 

Whoaaa!! I forgot about that browser! Loved it back in the day as it made my internet faster while being on 56K Dialup!

 

Honestly never seen Netscape Nav, since I only saw it in textbooks.

 

I remember those days, the old US Robotics 56k external modems. I used to have 2 pc's with them and played Everquest MMORPG - 2 characters online in real time together! These young 'uns dont know how lucky they are these days

 

That was monumental speed and a luxury! I lived with 28,8 kb/s for ages :O)

 

Yeah I had that modem, I felt like I was this guy when I got it >>>

 

Even now you're still in the Matrix with almost 100x internet and processing speeds.
56Kbps is the speed I get once I exhaust my data limit.

 

Anyone have a pair of phone lines and use the old "shotgun" approach with a Diamond modem? I had a friend who did that. He was getting 112K!

 

"Microsoft starting last-minute push to get Windows users to upgrade to IE1"

- IE10 will soon exit support, leaving many Windows users without any security or non-security updates, free or paid assisted support options, or online technical content.

- Microsoft is giving Windows users a last chance to upgrade to IE11

https://mspoweruser.com/microsoft-starting-last-minute-push-to-get-windows-users-to-upgrade-to-ie11/

---

"Wow, fancy that. Web ad giant Google to block ad-blockers in Chrome. For safety, apparently"
How many ad blocks could an ad slinger block if an ad slinger could block blocks?

- Google engineers have proposed changes to the open-source Chromium browser that will break content-blocking extensions, including ad blockers.

- The drafted changes will limit the capabilities available to extension developers, ostensibly for the sake of speed and safety.

- Raymond Hill, the developer behind uBlock Origin and uMatrix, said the changes contemplated by the Manifest v3 proposal will ruin his ad and content blocking extensions, and take control of content away from users.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/01/22/google_chrome_browser_ad_content_block_change/

 

Yeah. This is why I'm glad I've moved back to Firefox. Google will lose users to this but it won't matter to them.

IE 11? Hmmm. Let's see, I haven't used IE since version . . . . . . one?? I think I even paid for Netscape before evil Microsoft started giving their browser away for free lol.

 

Facebook, Twitter Trackers Whitelisted by Brave Browser

https://www.reddit.com/r/brave_browser/comments/ap8vqh/brave_whitelists_facebook_tracking/

 

Hi, for those who used google chrome and firefox. What extension do you normally add that you think is a must?

 

uBO,HTTPS everywhere,BD Traffic Light, Cookie Autodelete,Auto tab discord, Google shortcuts,Side view and Google translator for firefox.

 

Always ending up with this:
an adblock - zoom control - noscript - cookies on\off - image load on\off

 

Thanks for the info.. ^_^

 

https://github.com/ghacksuserjs/ghacks-user.js <<Tweak the profile as needed (Firefox user.js)
uBO, uMatrix, CookieAutoDelete (musts)
https everywhere, Decentraleyes, CanvasBlocker, CSS Exfil Protection, Chameleon, Privacy Badger, Neat URL (maybes -depending on your user.js settings)

 

Guys what do you think of torch browser? Is it an adware?

 

Anyone using Tor

 

I use Chrome because, for now, it works. For a long while, I bounced between Chrome and Firefox. When one wouldn't work for something I did regularly, I switched to the other. I haven't had a need to switch from Chrome in a long time, but I have considered doing so for privacy and performance reasons, as Firefox seems to be the faster of the two now.

-- Anthony with Killer Networking

 

Love the Tor Project, but I'm wayyy to impatient to use it. Glad we have it, props to the Devs and those passionate about it.

Firefox v66 has been buggy -esp. to hardened user.js configs. Still a great browser, and I encourage you to go back... just saying (guess you posted that a while back). Personally, I'm going w/ Waterfox more.

 

I know this is an old thread, but thought it might be worth a bump. Long time Chrome user (like since it was first released) and not fond of Firefox, Vivaldi, Opera, or Edge. I recently start using Brave as a Chrome replacement and I am liking it a ton. If you haven't checked it out, ever or recently, you should. Imported literally everything I had accumulated in Chrome over the years without issue. I am using it on Windows and Linux. In addition to being a better browser by nearly every measurement, it also looks nicer to me than any of the alternatives, including Chrome.

Brave Build with Tor and it's hides your IP Address from the sites you visit, by routing your browsing through several Tor Servers before it reaches your destination. These connections are encrypted, so your ISP or employer can't see which sites you're visiting either.

Popular sites often host multiple ads and as many as 70 trackers per site. Worse, most leading ad blockers still allow trackers through to profile your location, behavior and other browsing activity.so it's run faster than other regular internet browser.

https://www.bravebrowser.site/​

 

"it's hides your IP Address from the sites you visit, by routing your browsing through several Tor Servers before it reaches your destination."

That part stops me from trying your recommendation as I have really slow DSL here in the boonies.

 

I believe FF 70 is way faster than any CHrome builds with uBO installed. Also you can use FF default list to prevent tracking, enable DoH etc..

Yeah it'll clobber slow speed DSL. I faced this issue when LTE signal is very bad and speed is <1.5Mbps.

 

Sorry. I know getting fast broadband in some places is impossible. There are lots of pluses to living in a rural area, but that usually isn't one of them.

I started forcing myself to use Firefox again about a month ago. Since I generally do not like it very much, Brave was a nice alternative. It has everything I like about Chrome,

The reason I am looking to move away from Chrome is more the fault of my ISP than Chrome. Their gateway firmware does not allow changing DNS. I got fed up with redirects to their servers. I also do not like targeted ads. I could buy my own cable modem, but I am not interested in spending extra money for stealth. I don't really need the anonymity as much as I want to deny them access as a matter of principle and the satisfaction of spite.

 

I have set to Cloudflare for DoH in FF Network settings in General settings section.

 

Yes, I have FF set the same. This is one of the primary reasons I started looking for an alternative to Chrome.



Chrome is still my favorite browser in terms of aesthetics. It has the most tasteful UI, and Brave effectively retained the aesthetic qualities that I appreciate (obviously, since it is based on Chromium). I actually like the fact that Brave has a setting to take on my Windows Theme (Dark) without a need for using any third-party plugins.



Looks fantastic...

 

Wish duckduckgo would come up w their own browser, they have it on android and it's a great burner one that doesn't track and auto deletes if it's inactive. Waterfox, palemoon, firefox and vivalidi bc it's so fast. Use one isolated just for email etc

 

Portable Brave Updater - Use Brave Browser portable in all versions
good Morning February 9, 2020 11:21 13 comments
The Brave Browser already has a large fan base. Ben has now also created a portable updater for this browser, with which you can run the Nightly, Developer, Beta or Stable side by side and with your own profile...

 

(Slightly offtopic)

Here is the list of connections that Microsoft Edge requires to work spy on you properly

https://www.ghacks.net/2020/02/10/h...hat-microsoft-edge-requires-to-work-properly/

 

What a shame. It seems like Waterfox has gone the way of Piriform , Startpage, and many other privacy orientated software and "sold out".

https://www.ghacks.net/2020/02/14/waterfox-web-browser-sold-to-system1/

https://old.reddit.com/r/waterfox/comments/f3hi8s/privacy_browser_waterfox_appears_to_be_sold_to/

I had been using Waterfox as my main browser since the developer of Cyberfox abandoned his project many moons ago (maybe 2 years now, maybe longer) up until the December 2019 update. This was when things started to feel "different" for some reason and according to recent reddit posts I wasn't the only one to notice.

However now that the cat is out of the bag I'm feeling a little sad and disappointed. Personally it feels like CCleaner all over again for me but I won't mourn long on this one. I've returned to Firefox and with a few tweaks here and the right add-ons installed it almost feels like home again.

 

Guess it's time to give brave a try

Been using water fox for years, shame.

 

Ever since I switched to Mac OS, I have been using Safari and nothing else. I got used to it and love its speed.

 

tldr what's wrong w waterfox now?

 

After looking at reddit, for now, nothing.

Waterfox is partnered with an ad syndicator to get proper funding so it can actually get some real development time.

 

New feature.

Whoa! Brave browser can now show you web pages that no longer exist betanews.com | Feb 25, 2020

When browsing the web, it can be frustrating to encounter a 404 error. You know the page isn’t there, but you don’t always know why. Has it been removed on purpose, by accident, or was it never there in the first place?

Well, Brave -- the browser from Brendan Eich, a former CEO of Mozilla -- is about to make 404 frustration a thing of the past, by giving you the chance to view the actual web page after it’s been removed.

------------------------------------


6 browsers tested in terms of data protection and identification
good Morning February 25, 2020
The School of Computer Science & Statistics, Trinity College Dublin has conducted a recent test with six different browsers to determine which one calls the least home after installation. Google Chrome, Mozilla, Apple Safari, Brave Browser, Microsoft Edge and the Yandex browser....

"With the Brave, with its default settings, we found no use of identifiers that would allow the IP address to be tracked over time, and no sharing of the details of the websites visited with back-end servers."

An interesting result that came out of this study. So the Brave could be given a "top grade". From the perspective of data protection and also the forwarding of data more than justified.

If you want to read the complete report once: scss.tcd.ie/browser_privacy.pdf

 

I'm using the new MS Edge (was beta till recently) with a lot of tweaking through edge://flags/ which gives me less CPU usage, Disk usage, high resolution video and audio, and supports all of my favorite chrome extensions like "The Great Suspender" which shuts down all non-active tabs to keep them from sucking CPU/GPU.

Here's the flags I've changed / set:

Spoiler: Long...

"Enabled" unless otherwise stated...

Override software rendering list
Overrides the built-in software rendering list and enables GPU-acceleration on unsupported system configurations. – Mac, Windows
#ignore-gpu-denylist

WebRTC hybrid Agc2/Agc1.
WebRTC Agc2 digital adaptation with Agc1 analog adaptation. – Mac, Windows
#enable-webrtc-hybrid-agc

Anonymize local IPs exposed by WebRTC.
Conceal local IP addresses with mDNS hostnames. – Mac, Windows
#enable-webrtc-hide-local-ips-with-mdns

Smooth Scrolling
Animate smoothly when scrolling page content. – Windows
#smooth-scrolling

Latest stable JavaScript features [DISABLED]
Some web pages use legacy or non-standard JavaScript extensions that may conflict with the latest JavaScript features. This flag allows disabling support of those features for compatibility with such pages. – Mac, Windows
#disable-javascript-harmony-shipping

Experimental JavaScript
Enable web pages to use experimental JavaScript features. – Mac, Windows
#enable-javascript-harmony

Future V8 VM features
This enables upcoming and experimental V8 VM features. This flag does not enable experimental JavaScript features. – Mac, Windows
#enable-future-v8-vm-features

GPU rasterization
Use GPU to rasterize web content. Requires impl-side painting. – Mac, Windows
#enable-gpu-rasterization

Out of process rasterization
Perform Ganesh raster in the GPU Process instead of the renderer. Must also enable GPU rasterization – Mac, Windows
#enable-oop-rasterization

Developer Tools experiments
Enables Developer Tools experiments. Use Settings panel in Developer Tools to toggle individual experiments. – Mac, Windows
#enable-devtools-experiments

Zero-copy rasterizer
Raster threads write directly to GPU memory associated with tiles. – Mac, Windows
#enable-zero-copy

Force Dark Mode for Web Contents
[DISABLED] I use Dark Reader Extension.
Automatically render all web contents using a dark theme. – Mac, Windows
#enable-force-dark

Runs network service in-process
Runs the network service in the browser process. – Mac, Windows
#network-service-in-process

Prefetch requests for cross-origin main resources are fetched with a special NetworkIsolationKey
Prefetch requests for cross-origin main resources can be reused by next top-level navigations when HTTP cache is double-keyed. – Mac, Windows
#prefetch-main-resource-network-isolation-key

Enable Display Locking [DISABLED]
Enable Display Locking JavaScript API. The syntax and the APIs exposed are experimental and may change. – Mac, Windows
#enable-display-locking

Enable lazy image loading [ENABLED Automatically...]
Defers the loading of images marked with the attribute 'loading=lazy' until the page is scrolled down near them. – Mac, Windows
#enable-lazy-image-loading

Enable lazy frame loading [ENABLED Automatically...]
Defers the loading of iframes marked with the attribute 'loading=lazy' until the page is scrolled down near them. – Mac, Windows
#enable-lazy-frame-loading

Experimental Productivity Features
Enable support for experimental developer productivity features, such as built-in modules and policies for avoiding slow rendering. – Mac, Windows
#enable-experimental-productivity-features

Compositor threaded scrollbar scrolling
Enables pointer-based scrollbar scrolling on the compositor thread instead of the main thread – Mac, Windows
#compositor-threaded-scrollbar-scrolling

Choose ANGLE graphics backend [OPENGL]
Choose the graphics backend for ANGLE. D3D11 is used on most Windows computers by default. Using the OpenGL driver as the graphics backend may result in higher performance in some graphics-heavy applications, particularly on NVIDIA GPUs. It can increase battery and memory usage of video playback. – Windows
#use-angle

Enable Hardware Audio Offload
Allow Microsoft Edge to offload audio rendering on capable devices. – Windows
#edge-clear-content-audio-offload

Enable remote debugging through Windows Device Portal [DISABLED]
Enables remote debugging of browser tabs over the local network through Windows Device Portal. – Windows
#edge-devtools-wdp-remote-debugging

Microsoft Edge scrolling personality [DISABLED]
Enable Microsoft Edge scrolling personality for scroll and touch gesture animations. – Windows
#edge-experimental-scrolling

Experimental Tracking Prevention Features
Enables upcoming and experimental improvements to Tracking Prevention. – Mac, Windows
#edge-experimental-tracking-prevention-features

PlayReady DRM for Windows 10
If enabled, Microsoft Edge will use PlayReady DRM for the com.microsoft.playready key system. This feature requires Windows 10. – Windows
#edge-playready-drm-win10

Microsoft Edge tracking prevention
Enables tracking prevention in Microsoft Edge – Mac, Windows
#edge-tracking-prevention

Enable Text Fragment Anchor.
Enables scrolling to text specified in URL's fragment. – Mac, Windows
#enable-text-fragment-anchor

Audio Focus Enforcement
Enables enforcement of a single media session having audio focus at any one time. Requires #enable-media-session-service to be enabled too. – Mac, Windows
#enable-audio-focus-enforcement

Media Session Service
Enables the media session mojo service and internal media session support. – Mac, Windows
#enable-media-session-service

Use realtime priority thread for Audio Worklet
Run Audio Worklet operation on a realtime priority thread for better audio stream stability. – Mac, Windows
#audio-worklet-realtime-thread

Turn off caching of streaming media to disk.
Reduces disk activity during media playback, which can result in power savings. – Mac, Windows
#turn-off-streaming-media-caching

YUV Decoding for WebP
Decode and render lossy WebP images from YUV instead of RGB. You must also have GPU rasterization or OOP rasterization. – Mac, Windows
#decode-webp-images-to-yuv

Secure DNS lookups
Enables DNS over HTTPS. When this feature is enabled, your browser may try to use a secure HTTPS connection to look up the addresses of websites and other web resources. – Mac, Windows
#dns-over-https

Most of those are just "Enabled" changes, but I'll go back and edit the list to show any with specific setting changes.

If you find any others to change from default settings please let us know

Update: Here's a couple more that you might be able to use on Intel CPU's:

Spoiler: Intel related tweaks

WebRTC hardware video decoding
Support in WebRTC for decoding video streams using platform hardware.
#disable-webrtc-hw-decoding
Not available on your platform.

WebRTC hardware video encoding
Support in WebRTC for encoding video streams using platform hardware.
#disable-webrtc-hw-encoding
Not available on your platform.

To support some of those tweaks you also need to install from the Microsoft Store the HEVC codec and HEIF Image Extensions:

Here’s how you can get the HEVC codec from Microsoft Store for free

And, Enable HDR and HDR Streaming in Settings, only if your display has HDR enabled:

Stream HDR video on Windows 10

And, you can have mixed HDR/SDR monitors connected at once:

Dual Monitor Windows 10 HDR with an off-side, non-HDR monitor?

 

MICROSOFT, SOFTWARE
Microsoft Edge is now 2nd most popular desktop browser, beats Firefox
The Microsoft Edge browser is now being used by more people than Mozilla Firefox making it the 2nd most popular desktop browser.

 

No surprise, thanks to Mozilla completely ruining the interface of Firefox and coming up with copy/cat version numbers like Google Chrome...... (Firefox 3, Firefox 4, Firefox 5, Firefox 25, Firefox 30, Firefox 44, Firefox 75, Firefox 75.0.1, Firefox 75.0.2) Heck even getting Firefox to show me my bookmarks required me to research it online.

 

Firefox 75: Telemetry reports the default browser to Mozilla
Published on April 9, 2020 by Günter Born

​

The just released Firefox 75 comes with a nice by-catch in the Windows version. A telemetry function transmits the operating system used and the standard browser to Mozilla every day.

 

And It's because of this above BS that Mozilla is doing, which is hurting their user base. Their new Quantum which is now the Firefox browser is super good but lately they are starting to hit their real users over some random changes which do not need any attention to or fixing, essentially copying the worst parts of Chrome. It's sad, esp the Stable release has some Extensions installation flexibility vs developer versions. And one more recent change to break the address bar functionality to some childish bs.

They even had the Add-on disabling last year due to a silly certificate issue . Which should have never happened in the first place, and they started to bloat the browser with stupidity like Pocket and other garbage then Opt-Out crap as well, on top of their branding drama of FireFox etc. Unfortunate.

You might ask why still use FF despite reduced JS and YouTube performance - Say thanks to google, their Blink which is the core aspect of any Chromium based technology runs that YT platform fast, just like many sites which are optimized for Chromium, do not say it as Chrome or separate them together. As they all are same.

And that's the red flag for me and perhaps many users who are on Firefox, as you can see how Google selectively optimized their media platform. Chromium based any browser from Vivaldi which is best I guess to any "X" browser (Kiwi on mobile) they all use the same technology, they all take away lot of choice from the user, and every browser must bend to it at some point, now M$ which wanted to save money to pay for their engg teams since having Chakra engine for Edge or even supporting Mozilla Firefox would have been much better than handing over the keys to the single domination entity to the goliath Google shamelessly, what else could I expect from that new CEO who is just copying Apple ecosystem and as a Service model chasing only money no innovation. And on top Blink has all the data (from a privacy perspective), no matter what you do and these companies can advertise left and right, pull and push charts and ton of other stuff it doesn't matter. Period.

With complete ceding of control of web browser to Google, they will control the web as they wish to see fit, look at Google search, it's just not a search engine anymore, it curates content and they started hiding the ad results in the search results now, I do not want to go to the other side and mention other things but it's very bad, nowadays I use Bing as well as it gets a few things correct without censorship. So they hide the domain information and push for a lot of changes, they already have a huge share of wealth pumped into Mozilla which is ensuring a Trojan Horse at play that's the reason why Mozilla copies the Google in certain aspects heavily. Be it developer dream to work at Google or to satisfy the heads at the company.

8 years Chrome user here left to FF, cannot stand their stupidity of dumbing down the UI, Web and everything to make it simple and hide information for power users. And it works great every-time. Issues come from copying stupid features and other garbage from google but it's not worse like Chrome, shoving down the throat, you cannot even install extensions easily on Chrome outside store and there are a lot of restrictions from downloads to anything you can imagine.

With every installation of Chrome / Chromium one is promoting monopoly over the Internet. Like IE days except that instead IE holding back as it held back much of growth, but rather Google will dictate how the web will look like and function like and what should be accepted and what not.

 

I recommend Edge Chromium over Chrome since it is fast and fluid than basic Chrome.

I actually feel FF is faster than others. I am backend developer or sometimes a full stack developer and I use FF over Chromium while at work everyone uses Chrome exclusively. I always get criticized for not using using Chromium. Only issue with FF is JS debugging sucks while Chromium handles it w/o any issue and so it consumes 6GB plus RAM and then entire PC runs out of RAM. Hell, even most electron like apps like Postamn, VSCode are chrome like components which wants more RAM to operate and cache things eventhough I'm short on RAM every darn time!
I'm looking at Ryzen thinkpads that can take 64GB/128GB or even more but now I'm seeing max 32GB RAM with one slot soldered down with 8GB RAM or even less so RAM upgrade doesn't make much sense to me!

 

Cent Browser remains my favorite. There was a period of about six months where there were no updates, but they did release a version based on Chromium 78 and a few days ago brought it up to version 80.

 

Best web browser 2020: Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Opera go head-to-head

 

My sentiments as well. I dislike the overall design and experience of Chrome, but to a greater extent I dislike how much of a footprint it has.

Firefox all the way! Vivaldi is wonderful and easily the best Chromium browser IMO.